Beautiful Scotland - Rural Beach Award

Today we were really pleased to meet Gillian Slider, Community Development Officer with Beautiful Scotland. We have had a lot of contact with Gillian in her role with the Clean up Scotland campaign so it was lovely to meet face to face instead of by
e-mail or phone.

The purpose of Gillian's visit was to provide us with more information about the rural beach award adminstered by Beautiful Scotland. A rural beach is classified as one which may have limited facilities and is generally in a rural or
remote location. Whilst East Haven is certainly rural we were concerned that seaweed on the beach might exclude us from such an award. However, we were delighted to find that beach awards are as much concerned with the surrounding environment as they are with
the beach itself. For example, toilet provision, litter bins, recycling, picnic areas and interpretation boards. As far as the seaweed is concerned, it is a natural phenomena and provides a habitat that is important for shorelife, including feeding for several
bird species.

Gillian was really positive about what we have achieved thus far and has encouraged us to submit an application later this year. We are aware of a couple of things we can do to make further improvement but we hope to add East Haven to
the small group of award-winning rural beaches in Scotland in 2016.